I pulled from the 20oz Sprite bottle filled with vodka and listened to the sorority girls trash talk their sister. Some girl named Bethany had apparently been caught having sex in the woods. This was a big no-no in SororityLand. Sororities were far stricter than fraternities when it came to enforcing proper decorum and regulating underage drinking which is why Jenny and I had to conceal our alcohol consumption with the Sprite bottle mixtures.

My fraternity brother Griswold tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “I love it when these girls get catty.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “It’s entertaining as hell.”

“That’s funny as shit about Bethany getting railed in the woods. Sorority girls try to act all proper, but they’re the biggest sluts on campus.”

My mouth formed into a sly smile, but I raised a finger to my lips to warn Griswold to keep his voice down. The young man chuckled and returned his attention to his date.

We were all sitting on blankets near a small campfire that radiated a comfortable heat against the cold February night. Jenny sat between my legs and she was leaning back against my chest. Every time she giggled, her auburn hair tickled my nose.

“Your sisters are funny,” I whispered in her ear.

Jenny glanced over her shoulder, revealing the side profile of a cute face with a pointy little nose.

“I know,” she replied. “They don’t like Bethany, so this just gives them another excuse to bitch about her.”

“Are you having fun?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“We should go on the hayride.”

“Really?” I asked. “Do you want to?”

“It’ll be fun.”

“Uhhh...okay. Let’s go.”

We climbed to our feet and walked to the hayride loading station. The hayride was a large wagon being pulled by a tractor around the wooded area of the farmland. Couples who rode the hayride cuddled together in the hay and occupied their time by staring at the stars or by making out. It was this latter activity that I wanted to avoid.

Jenny and I stood together with four other couples as we waited for the hayride to finish its lap around the farmland. When the tractor pulled up, passengers exited the wagon and we climbed up into the hay. One of the guys with us, a shaggy-haired short kid, thought it would be ridiculously funny to tell nigger jokes.

“Why do police dogs lick their ass?” he asked with a chuckle. “To get the taste of nigger out of their mouth.”

A young woman and her date laughed which encouraged the bigot to continue.

“Why do niggers like basketball? Because it involves running, shooting, and stealing.”

A few laughs also followed from this joke.

“If an apple and a nigger fell out of a tree, which one would hit the ground first? The apple because the rope would stop the nigger from falling.”

My eyebrows arched. “That’s fucked up, man.”

“You’re an ignorant asshole!” exclaimed one of the girls. “Why don’t you shut your mouth?”

Jenny also rebuked him. “Grow up and stop being such a jerk!”

The young man snickered, but wisely decided to turn his attention to his date.

About midway through the ride, Jenny snuggled up close to me and things started getting awkward. My auburn-haired date was a sweet girl with a pretty face, but I was not attracted to her because of her extra poundage. Nevertheless, positive representation of my fraternity required me to attend the hayride and social decency necessitated that I hookup with my date. So I kissed her, gently at first, feeling her cold little nose pressed against mine. Since we were both wasted, what started out as an innocent kiss quickly evolved into a hardcore session of face sucking.

When the hayride ended, Jenny and I headed back to our friends by the campfire. As we walked, I thought about what it would be like to fuck a pretty sorority girl with a sloppy ass in the woods, but this fantasy incinerated when Jenny reached for my hand. Holding hands set off an instinctual need for me to seek flight.

“Hey,” I quickly said, “I’m gonna go use the bathroom in the barn. I’ll meet you back at the fire.”

“Why don’t you just go out in the woods?”

“Because it’s too damn cold outside to expose my manhood.”

Jenny laughed. “Okay…I’ll be waiting for you at the fire.”

She gave me a quick peck on the lips and then turned around and walked away. I silently wondered if she thought the real reason I needed to use the bathroom in the barn was because I needed to take a dump.

Good. Maybe she won't want to hook up with me anymore. I chuckled softly and started walking towards the bathroom. George Ward’s was a private farmland with a large wooden barn and a huge field with multiple campfires. Picnic tables were set up near the barn and they were covered with a decent spread of cookout food.

“Hey, Darren!” a male voice shouted. “Wait up, man!”

I glanced to my right and saw a Sigma brother I knew from the gym. Chris was a big, brown-haired kid with a solid neck. He took bodybuilding very seriously, but was one of those guys who was always massing out and never cutting up.

I grinned at him and extended my hand. “What’s going on, big man?”

He frowned. “This hayride is a bust. My date is puking right now in the bathroom.”

“That sucks.”

“Whatever. I got some weed on me. You want to smoke?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Let’s go to the woods. I don’t want any of these pussies out here to play scavenger.”

We entered the woods and the large meathead pulled out a glass pipe with a Ziploc bag of marijuana. He quickly packed the bowl and passed it to me with a lighter.

“Thanks, man,” I said and fired up.

Chris immediately began to talk shop. “So I’m doing the Deca D-bol stack right now. Shit is ridiculous. I’m on my fifth week and my strength has gone through the roof. Do you think I look like I’m holding any water?”

I took another hit and then handed him the pipe and lighter. My gaze carefully scrutinized his puffy-looking face.

“Yeah, man,” I chuckled. “You look like the Pacific Ocean.”

“Fuck. I thought so too. Oh well. Small price to pay for size.”

“No price to pay is too much,” I replied coolly.

Chris took another hit and said, “I’ve started smoking a lot more weed to make me hungry so I can ingest more calories. Those late night munchies are great for packing on size. How’s your diet been? You still eating clean?”

Before I could respond, we heard the sounds of footsteps running and young women giggling. A large group of sorority girls came sprinting right past where we were standing in the shadows. They all dropped their jeans, squatted, and started peeing.

“Oh my god!” squealed one of the girls. “I thought that bus ride was like never gonna end!”

“I know!” her friend exclaimed. “I’ve had to pee like the whole time!”

Chris and I stood speechless in the shadows as we watched the large group of weak bladder sorority girls urinating in the woods.

“Damn,” Chris whispered, “if I was into golden showers, I think I’d have a hard-on right now, but I’m actually kind of disturbed.”

My eyebrows arched. “Yeah, that shit just killed my high. Do we leave now or just stand here and hope they don’t see us?”

Chris grinned. “Watch this. Thetas love to smoke fucking weed. I bet I can get a few to come over here.”

The meathead repacked the bowl and fired it up. When he exhaled, he blew a large cloud of smoke in the direction of the urinating sorority girls. This process was repeated two more times before a pair of skinny blondes approached us.

Ten minutes later, I entered the barn and found a line of young men waiting to use the bathroom. Many of the guys were dressed in flannels, cowboy hats, and other forms of country-styled clothing. A small handful wore normal clothing. There were always a few young men at sorority functions who were “too cool” to dress up for the designated theme. I myself was ruggedly dressed in blue jeans, hiking boots, and a black and white flannel.

Standing patiently in line with my arms crossed, I silently observed the intoxicated behavior within the barn. A group of girls were dancing with their dates to the loud music of Lynyrd Skynrd that blasted from speakers mounted on the wall. Several yards behind the makeshift dance floor, two young men were wrestling in the hay. When they stood up and started brushing themselves off, a third young man came rushing in from behind with a kamikaze scream and tackled both of them to the ground. One of the young men rolled behind the legs of a dancing blonde in tight jeans who tripped backwards and fell. Her drunk sorority sister pointed down at her and started laughing so hard that she too fell into the hay. Another girl tried to help the blonde stand up, but the inebriated girls were giggling like crazy and they both collapsed to the ground where they laughed even harder. It was a drunken display of twenty-year-old sorority girls at their finest.

My attention was pulled away from the hysterical sorority laughter when I felt the presence of two young men getting in line behind me. They were a skinny pair of fratboys dressed in tight sweaters and blue jeans. One had blonde hair and the other brown, but both young men stood around 5ft. 8, wore silver hoop earrings, and had the exact same hairdo—a tight fade with a 3 inch spiky top. They looked like clones.

“Hey, bro,” Clone #1 said. “Don’t you bounce at LATE NIGHT LIBRARY?”

“Yeah” I replied. “I took off work tonight.”

He nodded. “Cool. I love that place. We would’ve been there tonight if we didn’t come here.”

“Fuck yeah,” Clone #2 agreed. “The girls that work up there are fine as hell. Shit, all the girls that go there are hot.”

“Yeah,” I replied with a snort, “they’re also extremely intelligent.”

His metrosexual groomed eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “Huh?” he asked stupidly.

The three of us moved forward with the bathroom line and Clone #1 shook his spiky head in disagreement.

“Nah, dude,” he said, “these girls aren’t that bad. I was talking to this chick in Beta the other day and she tried to convince me that satellites were on long poles in the sky. She didn’t understand that they’re orbiting the earth.”

My eyes widened. “Wow. That is pretty bad. I bet she was hot as shit though, huh?”

“Yeah, she was pretty hot. All those Beta bitches are from South Florida, so if they’re not born hot, they get hot with plastic.”

I shook my head in disgust. “South Florida princesses don’t have to worry about developing their mental faculties. All they have to do is smile and look pretty and wait for some rich guy to throw a ring on their finger.”

Clone #2 flashed a teethy grin. “Smile and look pretty. I like that.” He pointed at a young blonde walking by and yelled, “Smile and look pretty!” She ignored him, so he tried the next girl. “Hey! Smile and look pretty!”

“Fuck off, asshole!” the girl replied with a middle finger and stalked away.

The two young men giggled like a couple of sixth graders and I cracked a smile.

Clone # 2 said, “You know…I don’t think it’s limited to South Florida girls. There’s plenty of hot bitches I know from other places that are dumb as shit.”

“Bro, it’s all an act,” his sidekick surmised. “Most of those girls aren’t as stupid at they seem, they just act ditzy because they think that’s what guys like.”

My head tilted to the side in thought. “Hmmm…I never considered that before. You might be right. But I think a lot of these sorority girls make each other stupid through osmosis.”

Clone #2 nodded. “They spend so much time with each other they start soaking up each other’s nonsense.”

Clone #1 did a decent sorority girl impression: “Like honestly, oh my god! Did you see my new Fendi handbag? It’s sooo cute! Oh my god! That girl over there is like dating my ex-boyfriend, but I don’t care because she’s ugly.”

All three of us burst out laughing and my gaze darted around the barn. There were quite a few girls in sight I was willing to bet had never won a spelling bee.

“Dumb girls,” I muttered. “They spend so much time worrying about what they look like, they don’t have time to worry about anything else.”

Clone #1 shrugged dismissively. “Yeah, but who fucking cares? The dumber they are, the easier it is for me to get laid, and sorority girls are the hottest bitches on campus.”

Clone # 2 nodded. “I fucking love doing socials with these girls so they can dress up like little sluts and drink tons of alcohol. Are you in a fraternity?”

I nodded. “Upsilon.”

“Oh…really?” he replied. The young man looked surprised, but he tried to hide his startled reaction. “That’s cool, bro.”

His spiky-haired clone also seemed surprised by my association to a fraternity with a mediocre reputation. Their reactions insulted me and my right hand instinctively knuckled into a fist as I quickly weighed the consequences of dropping both these kids to the ground. No. I was representing Upsilon tonight and the last thing my brotherhood needed was to fuck up our flimsy relationship with the Thetas by earning a reputation for fighting at their sorority events.

I released the fist and asked, “What about you guys? Are you in a fraternity?”

“Epsilon,” they replied in unison.

There was hint of smugness in their response and this infuriated me. In the world of the Greeks, these two little shits were of higher status than me because of their association to an upper tier fraternity. For a cocky alpha male who was certain he could beat the shit out of both these young men with one hand tied behind his back and make any girl they fucked scream twice as loud, it was a terribly frustrating feeling. But this is why I had gone to Theta Hayride in the first place, to improve the status reputation of Upsilon.

On my way back to the campfire, I bumped into a girl named Autumn that I met through Mitchell when all three of us were freshmen. They were former classmates of St. ThomasHigh School in Fort Lauderdale which was definitely a plus in my book. Catholic School Girls rock.

Autumn was a very pretty blue-eyed girl with an athletically-thin body and long, curly blonde hair. There was always an unspoken degree of mutual attraction between the two of us, but every time I saw her she was “still with” her old boyfriend or “now with” a new boyfriend. Autumn was the kind of girl who jumped from one long-term boyfriend to the next, never staying single for an extensive period of time. This was probably because the young woman did not emit any kind of slut vibe whatsoever which meant she did not attract the kind of guys who were only interested in one night stands, two week flings, or three month booty calls. I know that whenever I saw this pretty girl, an immediate Wife Radar went off. There was just something overwhelmingly wholesome about her. I cannot explain it any better than to say that she was kind of woman you wanted to mother your children.

“Hey, Autumn,” I said with a warm smile. “How are you?”

“Hi, Darren,” she replied with an even warmer smile that seemed to glow on her elegant face. “How’ve you been?”

“Good, but I’m always better when I see you.”

She smiled again. “It’s been awhile. Brandy told me you broke up with your girlfriend?”

“Yeah…we broke up last semester. Things just weren’t working out. What about you? Are you still with your boy?”

“Yes,” she laughed, knowing I didn’t want to say his name because this would give him more credibility. “My boy and I are still together.”

“You think this one has potential?”

“I wouldn’t be with him if I thought otherwise.”

“No, I guess not. You’re not the type of person to date someone just because it’s convenient, are you?”

She shook her head. “No. Are you?”

“No,” I lied.

“Good,” she said. “I don’t like players.”

“Good. I don’t like girls that like players.”

Autumn laughed pleasantly, but decided to hit me with a curveball.

“So does that mean you’re Jenny’s date because there’s potential?”

“We get along,” I said with a shrug.

“I saw you on the hayride.”

“You did?” I replied, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

“You two were going at it pretty hard. It kind of surprised me because I didn’t think she was your type.”

Her words caught me off guard. This was a courteous way of saying she did not believe Jenny was attractive enough for me to date. I guess not even a wholesome girl like Autumn was beyond the exclusionary laws of social status. Maybe there was no escaping it. One way or another, people are always measuring each other and ascribing to them a particular social value.

I stuttered with my reply. “Yeah…well…she’s a nice girl. I’m having fun.” Translation—maybe you’re right, this was a mistake.

Autumn nodded her head and we continued to exchange pleasantries until I realized I was neglecting my date. We parted ways and did not see each other for the rest of the night, but her subtle remark about Jenny not being attractive enough for me lingered in the back of my mind and I avoided hooking up with my date.

On the bus ride home, a preppy Lambda brother with beauty shop, wavy brown hair was sitting a few rows in front of me. Fifteen minutes into our journey, he stood up and started yelling at two young men and their dates.

“Relax, bro,” replied one of the kids. “No one is talking shit about you.”

The Lambda continued to yell. “Your girl is just pissed because my boy fucked her!”

“You’re such an asshole, Mike!” the accused girl exclaimed.

“Fuck you, bitch!” he sneered.

I had heard enough and stood to my feet.

“Hey, motherfucker!” I yelled. “Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down!”

The tall Lambda whipped his head around to confront whoever dared to tell him such things, but when the young man saw a muscular guy outweighing him by twenty pounds, he quickly changed his mind.

“Dude, come on,” he replied meekly. “I don’t have a problem with you—these guys were talking shit to me.”

I cocked my head to the side, flared my nostrils, and stared at him with mad dog eyes.

The Lambda sat back down and whispered something to his date. She shot me a reproachful glare and then put her arms around her date, as if to protect him. The young man further retreated from the possibility of violence by quietly smooching with his date. Fucking pussy.

I sat back down feeling very satisfied with myself. I may have not been given any respect at Greek events for the social reputation of my fraternity, but I was a big, shaved head bouncer who knew how to throw his weight around—especially with some pretty boy, fratboy type. At the end of the day, this was the only respect that mattered. He knew it, I knew it, and everyone on that bus knew it. Social status doesn’t mean shit in the streets.

“I’m glad you did that,” Jenny whispered to me. “That guy is a complete ass.”

“Fuck him,” I said.

“All the Lambdas I know are a bunch of spoiled brats.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know any and I don’t want to know any.”

The bus pulled in front of the Theta sorority house, passengers filed off the vehicle, and the front lawn of the large brick building quickly became the normal scene to be found in the aftermath of a sorority date function. A few girls were puking and being helped inside by the House Mom. Other girls were laughing or arguing with their dates and a few couples were tonguing it up like a couple of High School students in the hallway. The social customary thing for me to do now would have been to invite Jenny home with me, but I felt like my hookup duty for the night was already fulfilled and I decided to bail on her.

“So do you want to hang out?” Jenny asked me as she wrapped her arms around my waist.

“I don’t know…I’m not feeling so hot. I think I drank too much.”

“Really? You seemed fine on the bus.”

“Yeah…I think those whiskey shots I did with Griswold are kicking in now.”

Her voice was hopeful as she suggested, “Maybe you’ll feel better if you drink some water.”

This was getting awkward. I needed to be as candid as possible without outright rejecting her.